Open Studios
Open studios Open Studios will be a place for productive exchange founded on the co-operative use of resources. Open Studios is a project that will provide workspace for artists, designers and fabricators around a core of common facilities that enable and support co-working and collaboration. The building will provide access to specialist facilities which would otherwise be out of reach for individuals and small businesses. These facilities will include metal, wood and ceramics workshops, meeting rooms and largescale indoor and outdoor assembly spaces. Key to Open Studio’s offer will be spaces generous enough to ensure that there is room for public activity, offering tenants the opportunity to share and display work, host events and teach. This will also give people who live, work and study nearby the opportunity to engage with and get involved in the activities happening within the building. Once established Open Studios will be a self-sustaining enterprise, run and managed collectively by Assemble in collaboration with Workshop East and project partners. Other tenants will be selected to bring together a broad range of skills and a diversity of approaches.
Common resources Open Studios encourages a shift towards collaborative forms of practice by providing common amenities and facilities. Open Studio’s common resources will nurture a community of practitioners who are able to mutually support each other’s creative and business practices. These resources will provide new means for businesses to expand their practice and grow in ways that would otherwise be difficult in a more discipline-specific environment. The resources will contribute to the local area, creating connections with, and work for local businesses, teaching recreational and vocational skills to local residents, bringing new audiences to the area, and increasing access to locally-produced culture. The resources at Open Studios will include shared making facilities such as a wood workshop, a metal workshop, a ceramics workshop, and a number of flexible, internal and external fabrication spaces. The building will be a resource for business creation, supporting local businesses both inside and outside Open Studios.
Working in residence Open Studios will provide the space, means and support for its residents to be actively involved in the surrounding area. Open Studios will support its tenants to act as a community of makers-in-residence, using public-facing facilities, relationships with local authorities and groups, and entrepreneurial activity to actively involve the Studios in the on-going development of the surrounding area. Tactics for embedding Open Studios in the area include building networks with local suppliers and businesses, providing space for collaborative working with local organisations and hosting a forum for longer-term research projects about the area. This open, flexible approach will lead to new opportunities, new partnerships and the development of propositional and self-initiated projects addressing the needs and requirements of the local urban condition.
Public experience Open Studios will create a place which encourages rich public experiences that can, in turn, support and enrich the working practice of its residents. The Studios will house a number of generous internal and external spaces that are accessible to the public. These will sit side-by-side with the individual studios and workspace, and will have the advantage of doubling up as production space for large projects. These spaces will mix the activities of creative production with those of public engagement allowing people access to art and craft practice at Open Studios. This activity will provide opportunities for the tenants of Open Studios to both share their work to a broad audience, and their skills and knowledge with the wider area. These spaces will provide for: exhibitions, open studio events, a temporary, or even permanent shop, workshops, tours, classes, and events that build upon the residents’ many existing links with academic institutions. All of this will result in the creation of a more active and productive community within Open Studios and will increase its benefit to the local area.
Assemble Open Studios is a collaborative project led by Assemble. Assemble is a multi-disciplinary collective working across architecture, design and art, based in Sugarhouse Studios. Founded in 2010 to undertake a single, self-built project, Assemble has since delivered a diverse and award-winning body of work, whilst retaining a co-operative working method that enables built, social and research-based work at a variety of scales. Assemble have experience conceiving, developing and delivering workspace projects like Open Studios, having initiated and delivered two workspace projects from scratch: Sugarhouse Studios, in Stratford, and Blackhorse Workshop, in Walthamstow. Assemble are committed to a collaborative form of practice which has seen them develop a relationship with Workshop East, a group of woodworkers and stonemasons, as well as a number of other practitioners as active participants in the Sugarhouse Studios project. The Open Studios project will be led by Assemble, and involve Workshop East and other collaborators as partners.
What we are looking for The ambition for Open Studios is that it will represent both a spatial expansion, and an organisational development of the operation at Sugarhouse Studios, where the lease is shortly to come to an end. Sugarhouse Studios was established with the help of the LLDC as a modest pilot project for interim use and has developed with the support of the developer Vastint into a complex of buildings supporting a community of businesses and practitioners. Between the two buildings the internal area is currently 660m2 with access to an external yard of 620m2. For further details on this project, its aims and achievements please see the project study section overleaf. The site for Open Studios could be a marginal, or overlooked, location. As we’ve proven with Sugarhouse, it is possible to create a public-facing creative community in such conditions. The aim of the project is that it will be complete and operational by Autumn 2016.
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Project study: Common resources Sugarhouse Studios, and its new-build component, Yardhouse, illustrate the benefits of common resources. The two buildings combine to make a place where generous common infrastructure is used to knit together individual spaces and practices. Sugarhouse Studios is a longterm residency on Stratford High Street, managed, designed and built by Assemble with the support of the London Legacy Development Corporation and others. The project began in 2011, and over time the buildings have been converted into a collection of workspaces that reflect changes in our priorities and relationships with other collaborators. The main building, hosts the primary workspaces of both Assemble and Workshop East who also take responsibility between them for the management of the various shared facilities. It is a place for hands-on making, prototyping, research and learning and includes an office, studio, wood and metal workshops, casting and ceramics facility, and shared project space for assembly and display.
In 2013, development began to extend the model of interim and collaborative workspace to include a new building. The result, Yardhouse, is a prototype for purpose-built affordable workspace. Designed and built by Assemble, it accommodates a broad range of working practices, from individual artists to businesses. Together, the two buildings form a working yard, which conserves a historic typology whilst establishing new use and value, as a semi-public amenity space for everything from large-scale assembly to communal meals. Since its inception Sugarhouse Studios has helped a number of businesses to begin and flourish. Today, these spaces support a wide range of creative practitioners to develop rich and productive working relationships.
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The Project Space in Sugarhouse Studios houses tools and supplies for communal use and allows for large scale assembly as well as exhibitions, talks and events
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The Wood Workshop run by Workshop East
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Sugarhouse facilities also include a metal room, with welding and milling capabilities
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The Casting room allows for wet works, pottery and casting and includes a kiln
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The concrete tiled facade of Yardhouse, produced in the Project Space of Sugarhouse Studios in collaboration with Mollie King, a Yardhouse tenant
6–7 Upper floor studios in Yardhouse in use 8 4
A ground floor studio during the construction of a partition wall by Andrew Friend, a Yardhouse tenant
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Project study: Working in residence Like many of Assemble’s projects, Open Studios will be a locally-embedded organisation: working with businesses and residents from the area to develop mutually-beneficial resources and relationships, as well as working on collaborative proposals for the active improvement of the area. Since 2013, Assemble have been working on a number of projects in the Granby Four Streets in Toxteth, Liverpool where many houses have lain vacant and in a state of dereliction since a large number of residents were moved out following the Toxteth riots in 1981. Assemble were initially commissioned to work on designs for the refurbishment of a complete terrace. Their role has subsequently expanded to include the redevelopment of a number of terraced houses with a locally-based Community Land Trust, formed in 2011 by a group of residents who were seeking to combat the local dereliction of their once vibrant community through planting, building, and repairing. This relationship has also led to proposals for a collective winter garden and a small social enterprise: Granby Workshop, established by Assemble as
a way of supporting and propogating the type of hands-on activity that led to the establishment of the Granby Four Streets Community Land Trust. The long-term aim of the project is to have a workshop that will engage a large number of local people in a programme of regular workshops, which will provide the opportunity to share skills and knowledge. As the project progresses the input of local designers and craftspeople will contribute towards a growing range of designs that are made in Granby. Assemble have also developed this method of working in the development of Sugarhouse Studios and the design for New Addington’s Central Parade. Not only is the Sugarhouse development an ongoing reaction to the conditions around it, but it has also produced the publication ‘Make, Don’t Make Do’: a strategic research project characterising the Stratford High Street area and making a number of propositions for its improvement. New Addington also benefited from having Assemble as resident designers in the development of a design for a town square that best suited this particular suburban town centre.
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1 (overleaf) The wood working room in Granby Workshop under construction 2 A view of Cairn Street, in Toxeth, with several vacant houses, prior to construction 3 A large scale, sectional model of the refurbishment proposals
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4 The rear garden of one of the vacant terrace houses converted in to a casting workshop for the production of mantelpieces from cement and construction waste 5 Surface finishes being applied to mantlepieces, prior to assembly 6 A mantelpiece installed in a resident’s home 7 An event at the Central Parade stage, New Addington 8 A spread from Make Don’t Make Do, with mapping of existing land uses
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A wood carving course in Blackhorse Workshop’s bench space. Image credit: Ben Qiunton
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View of cafĂŠ space and workshop from the bakery counter. Image credit: Ben Qiunton
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Musical instrument making activity stall at the monthly market. Image credit: Blackhorse Workshop
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Project study: Public experience Creating meaningful public engagement with creative production is a core principle of Open Studios and has been a key tenant of Assemble’s projects. Blackhorse Workshop, a public ‘library for tools’ in Waltham Forest, was a project started, designed and built by Assemble. It is a new kind of civic institution, providing affordable access to tools and workspace as well as on-site technical expertise. Assemble worked with the Greater London Authority, London Borough of Waltham Forest, and Create London to deliver the project. The Workshop combines opportunities for education and work, for everyone from independent practitioners and individual hobbyists through to sole traders and small businesses. It offers a wide range of equipment as well as a regular programme of classes and activities. A café-bakery and brewery are open to the public, space is offered for hire, and a ‘food and maker market’ runs outside in the yard every month.
Blackhorse Workshop is currently occupying a building on an interim basis, but it’s an enterprise with long-term vision. The flexibility and simplicity of the built elements are both intended to suit its robust current use and to be easily moved to an alternative location. Simple, utilitarian materials are coupled with hand-crafted elements, such as a range of furniture designed to be entirely reproducible on the machines within the workshop, to create a practical space with an economy of means. Blackhorse Workshop is one of several Assemble projects which have explored the potential for marginal sites to take on a more public use. Assemble’s first project, The Cineroleum, transformed a derelict petrol station into a popular temporary cinema. The Folly for a Flyover project developed an overlooked and previously inaccessible site beneath a flyover in Hackney Wick into an arts venue that hosted a large number of visitors for a diverse range of events from brass band performances to boat tours of the Lee Navigation.
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The Folly for a Flyover during an evening screening in summer 2011
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The empty and inaccessible site of the Folly for a Flyover 2 months prior to construction commencing
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The derelict petrol station in Clerkenwell which hosted the Cineroleum over a 6 week programme
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The vacant industrial unit which formed the shell of Blackhorse Workshop
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The Cineroleum after the curtain raising, following a screening
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An evening class in Blackhorse Workshop bench space. Image credit: Ben Quinton
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Current collaborators: Workshop East CIC Workshop East is a social enterprise established in Newham in 2013 by a group of makers to provide affordable, well-equipped workspace for designer-makers, crafts people and artists. Recognising the prohibitive costs of specialist machinery for most start-ups in heavier disciplines such as woodwork and stone masonry, Workshop East offers managed workspace and access to high specification equipment to SME’s and sole traders, allowing them to develop their businesses in a safe and professional environment. Workshop East currently supports 11 small businesses and sole traders working across the arts, design, craft, architecture, conservation and education. Workshop East work collaboratively and supportively, low rental and peer support as well as high quality equipment provide early career makers a stepping stone between training and running their own businesses. More established makers have the opportunity to pass on their skills and knowledge as well as working with creative freedom.
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1 Workshop East’s bench space adjacent to the machine room in Sugarhouse Studios 2 Nancy Peskett, a stone mason and member of Workshop East, in action 3 America black walnut chair hand carved by Steve Cook of Workshop East
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1 Object for an Escape by Andrew Friend, installed at Selfridges, London during the Festival of Imagination, 2014. Image credit: Andrew Friend 2 Soft Furnishings produced in Yardhouse by Ciara McGarrity of Waffle Design. Image credit: Yeshen Venema photography 3 Paintings by Marie Jacotey on display at Rook and Raven Gallery, 2015
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Current Tenants Andrew Friend, artist and designer HaidĂŠe Drew, product designer Ian Smart, fine art fabricator Jack James Furniture, bespoke furniture maker Juan Montero, designer maker Latifa Fifi Nouibat, cycling accessories designer and maker Marianne Keating, artist Marie Jacotey, artist Marina Stanimirovic, wearable objects designer and maker Michael Iveson, artist Mollie Anna King, artist Patrick White, artist Studio LW, furniture designers and makers Waffle Design, interior accessories designer and maker
What people have said ‘The nomination of architectural collective Assemble for the Turner Prize in May marked a moment of real significance. Young, widely admired and increasingly influential, Assemble do things differently… They initiate their own projects and work with communities and institutions to create designs of real social value.’ Edwin Heathcote, Is Assemble the future of progressive architecture? The Financial Times, July 24th 2015
‘From initiation through to completion Assemble demonstrated exceptional dedication, communication skills, and design ability. The result is a scheme that has set new standards for the borough in terms of value for money, community engagement, and high quality contextual design... we would not hesitate to appoint Assemble again.’
‘They now offer the prospect of something radical and transformative: that improvised architecture can help change for the better the way people live in a place. The ideas... include an attachment to the freedoms of the impromptu and the temporary, a desire to invent, initiate and realise projects as well as designing their structures, an interest in the activities of a space as much as its construction, the conception of construction itself as an activity, the sheer pleasure of making things. They are in a tradition of architects who prize making and responsiveness over the design of monuments’ Rowan Moore, Assemble: from pop-ups to grown-ups, The Observer, July 6th 2014
Finn Williams, Client at London Borough of Croydon.
Awards Nominated for the Turner Prize 2015 Nominated for the Iakov Chernikhov Prize 2014 Winner of Icon Emerging Architecture Practice of the Year 2014 Winner of the Bauwelt First Works Prize 2013 Nominated for Design of the Year 2012
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1 A performance at the Theatre on the Fly, a temporary theatre in Chichester. Image credit: Jim Stephenson 2 The Brutalist Playground exhibition at the Royal Institute of British Architects. Image credit: Tristan Fewings 3 A view of the from the crowd in The Playing Field, an installation in Southampton. Image credit: Jim Stephenson 4 The solid concrete soak-away in New Addington Central Parade
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